Facebook Gives Advertisers Images From Shutterstock

To enhance Facebook ads, marketers can now use Shutterstock imagery at no charge.

Advertisers seeking digital imagery for their Facebook ads now can include photographs and illustrations from Shutterstock.

The commercial imagery provider and Facebook on Thursday announced a deal to make millions of digital images from Shutterstock's library available through Facebook's online ad creation tool.

"Businesses of all sizes need compelling, high-quality imagery in order to compete and to communicate with their audiences," said Shutterstock's founder and CEO Jon Oringer in a statement. "We're working with Facebook to make it easier than ever for them to do just that."

The arrangement appears to be a good deal for advertisers, who don't have to pay for the images, and for Shutterstock photographers, who get paid by Facebook.

"Royalties are based on a contributor's earnings tier and will be the same as or more than those for subscription downloads, with usage rights that are more limited than those in our standard royalty-free license," a Shutterstock spokesman explained in an email.

Facebook is also simplifying the process of creating multiple ads at once, whether the ads are intended for separate or single campaigns. The company's new image uploader offers the ability to select a range of Page photos, images used in prior ads and Shutterstock images.

Shutterstock provides an API that allows developers to interact with its service programmatically, and Facebook is using it to enable ad creators to search through Shutterstock images from within the Facebook ad system.

A year after seeing its stock price drop below the initial offering price of $38 per share, Facebook last month demonstrated stronger advertising revenue than expected, returning its shares to the point at which they were valued when they debuted. In July, Facebook reported $1.81 billion in revenue, 88% of which ($1.6 billion) represents advertising revenue, a 61% increase from Q2 2012.

In addition to announcing its partnership with Shutterstock, Facebook said it has updated its mobile apps for managing Pages, which is its offering for businesses, organizations and brands. The update adds the ability to: upload multiple photos to a single post, edit existing Page administrators, and add new Page administrators via a mobile device. The Android and iOS Pages Manager apps are available from Google Play and the iTunes App Store, respectively.